Sinn Féin's leadership met late last night to decide if Mr Gerry Adams should attend US Congressional hearings on alleged republican links with Colombian guerrillas.
Reliable sources indicated that a vocal lobby within Sinn Féin was pressing the party president to heed legal advice and not to attend the hearings scheduled for tomorrow.
A Sinn Féin spokesman told The Irish Times last night that it was expected that the leadership's decision would be made public this morning after the decision was first passed to Washington.
Mr Adams may argue he should give evidence out of a personal desire "to clear the whole thing up", a source said, but it is known many of his senior colleagues are against this.
The party meeting was postponed yesterday while Mr Adams responded to Mr David Trimble's call for a meeting to discuss the status of the IRA ceasefire. The First Minister called yesterday for Mr Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness to "come clean" on the state of the ceasefire following a series of incidents including the Castlereagh break-in, the murder of a taxi-driver in Co Tyrone last week, fresh allegations of gun-running and the discovery of an IRA hit-list.
Mr Adams has already stated that he has received legal advice from Madden and Finucane, the solicitors representing the three Irishmen detained in Colombia, not to attend for questioning by members of the US International Relations Committee in Washington tomorrow.
Members of the committe want to ask Mr Adams about alleged links between FARC, the Colombian rebel movement, and three Irishmen arrested on August 11th last while trying to leave Bogota Airport using false passports.
Mr Adams admitted to the BBC last night that Sinn Féin had made "a bit of a mess" of the controversy when the arrests of Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan on suspicion of training Marxist rebels became known.
Supporters of the three Irishmen have also called for the Congressional hearings to be called off on the grounds that they would prejudice a fair trial.
Ms Caitriona Ruane, who represents the Dublin-based Bring Them Home campaign, said the hearings were a flagrant violation of the right to a fair trial.
The Irish Times reported yesterday that the effectiveness of FARC was enhanced through co-operation with the IRA. The allegation is contained in a dossier compiled by US congressmen which asserts that innocent people died as a result of the training of FARC guerrillas by the IRA. Reliable sources have indicated that there was a strong relationship between FARC and that up to 15 IRA members have been involved in the training of the rebels.